Vehicles of The Future: Marc Bolitho Of Recogni On The Leading Edge Technologies That Are Making Cars & Trucks Smarter, Safer, and More Sustainable

An Interview With David Leichner

Always be willing to learn. This includes in your own job role and outside your role. Technology changes over time, so spend the effort to keep up to date.

The automotive industry has been disrupted recently with new exciting technologies that have made cars and trucks much smarter, much safer, and much more sustainable and more environmentally friendly.

What other exciting disruptive technologies will we see in the next few years? How much longer will fossil fuel powered cars be produced? When will we see fully autonomous vehicles? Can we overcome the challenge of getting stuck in traffic? As cars become “moving computers”, do we have to worry about people hacking our cars? How else will our driving experience be different over the next five years? To address these questions, Authority Magazine started a new interview series about “Exciting Leading Edge Technologies That Are Making Cars & Trucks Smarter, Safer, and More Sustainable.” In this series we are talking to leaders of automotive companies, automotive tech companies, EV companies, and other tech leaders who can talk about the vehicles of the future. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marc Bolitho, CEO of Recogni.

Marc Bolitho is the CEO of Recogni, the leader in AI-based perception purpose-built for autonomous vehicles. He has 28 years of experience in automotive electronics. As the Senior Vice President of ZF Group, he was responsible for the ADAS business unit with $2B in annual revenue and a global team of 5000.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started in the automotive industry?

From an early age, I wanted to understand how things worked and admired people that could solve problems. I made the decision early that I wanted to study engineering. I attended the University of Michigan and received my degree and started my career as a product engineer with an automotive supplier in sensor design for electronic braking and steering systems. I progressed into engineering and business leadership positions for automotive electronic safety systems covering occupant safety, braking, steering, and ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). Today, I am CEO at Recogni, a semiconductor and software company focused on solving problems to enable autonomous mobility.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I have been in the industry for nearly 30 years now and have been through a few business cycles. However, the most interesting was the recent pandemic. The entire industry had to transition from in person work to remote work. At the beginning it was not clear how successful we would be at this. Fortunately, the communication tools like video conferencing were available to facilitate this. If this had happened a few years earlier, the unavailability of these tools would have hindered performance. When there are difficult times, I am always impressed that high functioning teams can accomplish more than they expected they could. This was the case in the pandemic and proved that you can run a business and product development remotely for a significant time.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

I am very excited to work on overcoming barriers that the industry faces with autonomous driving. We are taming two diametrically opposing factors being high compute capability for AI processing while minimizing power consumption, effectively enhancing the driving range of electric vehicles. Our current projects are mainly centered around these pillars which are fundamental to realizing autonomous driving.

How do you think this might change the world?

This can change the world by enabling safe and sustainable autonomous driving. High compute capability allows for the full processing of the data from high resolution sensors. This allows the vehicle to detect cars and trucks at greater distance and vulnerable road users over a wide field of view. This leads to a high level of safety. Low power consumption of this processing leads to a longer driving range or less demand on the battery capacity as well as vehicle weight, minimizing the carbon footprint.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?

Two of the megatrends in the mobility industry are autonomous driving and electric vehicles. One potential drawback that the automotive industry is now comprehending is the computation capability that you need for safe autonomous driving is high. When you increase the compute, you increase the power required. This can have a significant impact on the range of electric vehicles and the carbon footprint.

Achieving driving autonomy requires technology development on many different fronts, including efficient processing, intelligent AI algorithms, and low power consumption on one side, as well as the development of high capacity, low weight batteries, and judicious, purpose-built autonomous system designs. The interdependencies of seemingly orthogonal technologies needs to be addressed to reduce or eliminate the “Black Mirror” effect.

At Recogni, the focus is on purpose-built processors for autonomous driving applications with high compute capacity, low power consumption, and very low latency. High compute capacity facilitates a fewer number of required components, feature upgradability over time, and enabling software-defined vehicles. Low power consumption significantly reduces the burden on the vehicle battery, leading to a longer range of operation and a lower carbon footprint. Low latency allows for faster vehicle reaction times, leading to a higher level of safety.

What are a few things that most excite you about the automotive industry as it is today? Why?

The automotive industry has traditionally been slow paced in development with minor evolutionary changes over time. We are now at an inflection point where OEMs are striving to bring vehicles to the market at an accelerated pace to be competitive. Given the rapid iteration cycle of tech companies — as the tech industry’s role in the development of vehicles continues to grow, innovation will propagate in the automotive industry.

I am excited to see Recogni effectively serving this major inflection point in automotive compute processing with its disruptive and purpose-built solution that resonates well with the top tier OEMs and tier ones.

What are a few things that most concern you about the automotive industry as it is today? What must be done to address these challenges?

One challenge that the industry faces is the transition to electric vehicles while increasing features on the vehicle that consume power and reduce driving range. These are not only ADAS features, but also includes AI assistant features, digital cockpit, and augmented reality.

These systems must be innovative, and purpose built for the task in the vehicle to minimize impact to range anxiety.

Based on your vantage point as an insider in the automotive industry, what other exciting disruptive technologies will we see in the next few years? Can you share some of the new developments that will make vehicles smarter, safer, and more sustainable?

Environmental awareness both outside and inside of the vehicle cabin is crucial for safety and efficient operation. We see the need for vehicle compute increase with the need for processing more environmental data, as noted earlier, in a low power profile, where there is no additional demand for battery capacity and weight.

In your opinion, how much longer will fossil fuel powered cars be produced? When do you think EVs will be the majority of vehicles in use? Can you explain?

From a mass market perspective, we see a conversion from ICE to electric vehicles year over year. In 2022 alone, while California electric passenger vehicle sales were 16%, other states had an adoption rate between 3 to 9 percent. As OEMs grow their EV offerings at various price points, we expect to see a faster conversion rate in the coming years as consumers look to purchase new models.

The time frame of EV adoption is reliant on multiple factors including consumer choices and preferences, price points, governmental policy. Currently, 6% of vehicles sold in the United States are EVs. Assuming a year over year doubling of the EV penetration rate, one could hypothesize that the majority of vehicles will be EVs within 10 years.

When do you think we will see fully autonomous vehicles deployed in a mainstream way? What do you think are the main barriers to reaching that stage?

For AVs to become commonplace, they must be able to navigate as safely as an alert driver in all weather, terrain, and lighting conditions. Existing implementations do not address the environmental sustainability issue at its core. Compute architectures are mostly general purpose and built for applications other than automotive. The key factor here is the availability of purpose-built compute solutions with low latency and low power with the capability to interface with a multitude of sensory functions.

How else will our driving experience be different over the next five years?

Going forward, vehicles will be defined by the software features that are enabled and overall user experience. This includes Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and In-Vehicle Infotainment systems. There will be an increase in the subscription model to enable these features on vehicles. To facilitate this, high performance central computing is needed that allows headroom for feature growth over time.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Automotive Industry?

1. Have a continuous learning mindset.

• Always be willing to learn. This includes in your own job role and outside your role. Technology changes over time, so spend the effort to keep up to date.
• Go outside your comfort zone.

2. Be a great team member and help to cover gaps to make projects successful.

• Understand your role and how it interfaces with the roles around you.
• You are successful if the team is successful.

3. Maintain optimism.

• Always be optimistic, you and your team can always achieve more than seems possible at the beginning.

4. Focus on the customer and the end consumer.

• Customer proximity is important to ensure you are solving the problems that are important.
• Understand how the end consumer uses your products.

5. Identify market trends and innovate.

• Create market scenarios and innovate to cover future market gaps.
• Be bold and take a risk.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Outside of day-to-day work and business, there seems to be an increasing amount of divisiveness in the world. More time needs to be spent listening and finding common ground to create sustainable solutions for the future.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow me at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-bolitho-2107346/ and Recogni at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/recogni/ and https://www.recogni.com/.

Thank you so much for the time you spent doing this interview. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.